arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Martín González-Alonso.
Different aspects of Tau physics are discussed, both as a New Physics probe and as a tool to study Standard Model physics. The goal of this Tau2014 opening talk is to introduce (some of) the many research directions currently being pursued with tau leptons, which will be discussed in great technical detail in the following talks.
We discuss the consequences of the approximate conservation of the vector and axial currents for the hadronic matrix elements appearing in beta decay if non-standard interactions are present. In particular the isovector (pseudo)scalar charge g_S(P) of the nucleon can be related to the difference (sum) of the nucleon masses in the absence of electromagnetic effects. Using recent determinations of these quantities from phenomenological and lattice QCD studies we obtain the accurate values g_S=1.02(11) and g_P=349(9) in the MS-bar scheme at mu=2 GeV. The consequences for searches of non-standard scalar interactions in nuclear beta decays are studied, finding epsilon_S=0.0012(24) at 90%CL, which is significantly more stringent than current LHC bounds and previous low-energy bounds using less precise g_S values. We argue that our results could be rapidly improved with updated computations and the direct calculation of certain ratios in lattice QCD. Finally we discuss the pion-pole enhancement of g_P, which makes beta decays much more sensitive to non-standard pseudoscalar interactions than previously thought.
Precision measurements in nuclear beta decay offer a sensitive window to search for new physics beyond the standard electroweak model and allow also the determination of the fundamental weak vector coupling in processes involving the lightest quarks. Searches for new physics are also a strong motivation for experiments carried out at the high energy frontier reached at the most powerful particle colliders. It is instructive to confront results from the low energy and the high energy frontiers in order to look for possible complementarities and orient new avenues for experiments at low energies. We review here the status of constraints on new physics obtained from nuclear and neutron decays and compare them to those from other semi-leptonic processes and from the LHC. We stress the requirements of new precision experiments in beta decay in order to impact the search for new physics at the light of current and projected LHC results. We describe recent experimental results and ongoing developments in nuclear and neutron beta decay, with emphasis on their planned goals to improve present limits on exotic weak couplings.
It is well known that semileptonic decays of light hadrons and nuclei can be used not only to determine the CKM element V_ud with high accuracy, but also as probes of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this talk I review recent works that studied this within an Effective Field Theory framework, comparing the sensitivity of different low-energy and LHC observables. A clear complementarity between low- and high-energy searches it is found.
We study the impact of a leptophobic Z' gauge boson on the C_{1q} and C_{2q} parameters that describe the low-energy, parity-violating electron-quark neutral current interaction. We complement previous work by including the penguin-like vertex corrections, thereby completing the analysis of one-loop calculation up to O(m^2_q'/M^2_Z') terms. We analyze the sensitivity of these probes to the different couplings Z'\bar{u}q (q=u,c,t) and Z'\bar{d}q (q=d,s,b), in a model-independent way that can be applied to any specific Z' scenario. We show that constraints from neutral kaon and heavy flavor studies preclude significant contributions from flavor non-diagonal couplings except for those involving top quarks. We apply our results to a light Z' with flavor diagonal couplings to up or down quarks, a scenario proposed in the literature to explained the CDF W plus di-jet anomaly. We find that such a particle would not affect the C_{1q} coefficients, but it would have a sizable impact on C_{2q} couplings that can be probed by future measurements of parity-violating deep inelastic scattering of polarized electrons off of deuterium.
We discuss low-energy and collider constraints on the effective couplings characterizing non-standard charged current interactions. A direct comparison of low-energy and LHC probes can be performed within an effective theory framework, when the new physics mediating these interactions originates in the multi-TeV scale. We find that for the effective couplings involving right-handed neutrinos the LHC bounds from pp -> e+MET+X are at the (sub)percent level, already stronger than those from beta decays. For operators involving left-handed neutrinos, the (axial-)vector and pseudo-scalar effective couplings are best probed at low energy, while scalar and tensor couplings are currently probed at the same level by beta decays and the LHC channels pp -> e+MET+X and, by using SU(2) gauge invariance, pp -> e^+e^- +X. Future beta decay experiments at the 0.1% level or better will compete in sensitivity with higher statistics and higher energy data from the LHC.
In this talk I review the New Physics reach of semileptonic beta decay experiments, and their interplay with LHC searches. Assuming the new particles are heavy enough we can use an Effective Field Theory approach to analyze the LHC searches, what allows us to perform a direct and model-independent comparison with low-energy experiments.
Using an effective field theory approach, we study the new physics (NP) corrections to muon and beta decays and their effects on the extractions of V_ud and V_us. Assuming nearly flavor blind NP interactions we find that the CKM-unitarity test is the only way to expose NP. The four short-distance operators that can generate a deviation are strongly constrained by the phenomenological bound |Vud|^2 + |Vus|^2 + |Vub|^2 - 1 = (-0.0001 \pm 0.0006), corresponding to an effective scale > 11 TeV (90% CL). Depending on the operator, this constraint is at the same level or better than that generated by the Z pole observables.
We analyse the so-called violations of quark-hadron duality in Finite Energy Sum Rules with the LR correlator, through the study of the possible high-energy behavior of the LR spectral function, taking into account all known short-distance constraints and the experimental tau-decay data. In particular we show that the use of pinched weights allows to determine with high accuracy the dimension six and eight contributions in the Operator-Product Expansion, O_6 = (-4.3^{+0.9}_{-0.7}) 10^{-3} GeV^6 and O_8 = (-7.2^{+4.2}_{-5.3}) 10^{-3} GeV^8.
We describe non-standard contributions to semileptonic processes in a model independent way in terms of an SU(2)_L X U(1)_Y invariant effective lagrangian at the weak scale, from which we derive the low-energy effective lagrangian governing muon and beta decays. We find that the deviation from Cabibbo universality, Δ_CKM = |V_ud|^2 + |V_us|^2 + |V_ub|^2 - 1, receives contributions from four effective operators. The phenomenological bound of Δ_CKM = -1E-4 +- 6E-4 provides strong constraints on all four operators, corresponding to an effective scale greater than 11 TeV (90% CL). Depending on the operator, this constraint is at the same level or better then the Z pole observables. Conversely, precision electroweak constraints alone would allow universality violations as large as Δ_CKM = -0.01 (90% CL). An observed nonzero Δ_CKM at this level could be explained in terms of a single four-fermion operator which is relatively poorly constrained by electroweak precision measurements.